Grimmauld Place
by I Was Here Moments Ago
Summary: Remus returns to Grimmauld Place after the Battle at the Ministry. RL/SB


The first thing he noticed was that his footsteps echoed, hard and unfamiliar against the once shiny floor, now dulled with time and the shoe prints of strangers.

He was sure now that they must have always echoed and he'd just been missing it. But not entirely sure. He'd not been entirely sure of anything since Sirius had been pulled through the veil.

Less than an hour ago.

No one else had come back to Grimmauld Place yet. Remus had wanted to pack before they had, take his things and disappear because they'd _watch_ him. Molly - she would try to hide it. Dumbledore, if he came, would be less subtle. He wasn't sure which he would have preferred, so he had decided to avoid both.

Sirius's coffee was still in the kitchen. Of course it was still in the kitchen. He didn't know what he expected, just because Sirius had gone didn't mean his coffee would be gone too.

He wished it did. It was cold and half empty. Fitting, Remus supposed. He had only been thirty six. He reached out to touch the rim, the place where Sirius's lips had been hours before, alive and _stupid _and probably in the middle of going on about how he wondered how much a Flobberworm could be inflated before it exploded because he was a fucking _idiot_ and he was _dead_. He pulled his hand back before he made contact. They'd all goaded him about being a sentimental tosser at school, but he'd always thought Sirius had secretly liked it. Remus hadn't liked it about himself.

He poured the coffee down the sink, washed the mug by hand and immediately wished he hadn't. He hadn't been dead a day and already Remus was washing him away. Something pierced through the numbness that had settled over him since leaving the Ministry and a sob tore itself from his throat before he regained control. He had no intention of crying over his best friend's coffee mug. Or crying. That never did anyone any good and it certainly wouldn't bring Sirius back.

The stairs creaked as he slowly ascended them, finally feeling the ache from the battle in his prematurely arthritic joints, caused by thirty years of being popped out of place, of bones being broken and piercing flimsy skin, internal organs being crushed and moved about as he transformed. Sometimes James had looked away. Peter had always looked away after the first time, and Remus didn't blame him. Remus would look away if he could. Sirius never had though, he had watched him turn into a monster, sometimes forgetting to turn into Padfoot until the werewolf had already hit him, as if by watching he could take away some of the pain. In a way he had. In a way, he'd made it worse. Remus had never mentioned it either way.

The bedroom door was wide open and he felt somewhat exposed. It was always left closed, lest any house elves came wandering in, _touching_ things or finding anything untoward in the drawers of bedside tables and presenting them at dinner. But they had been in a rush when the message had arrived and neither of them had thought to tidy up. They had wasted enough time pulling on their clothes. Remus had had his suspicions for a ridiculous fleeting moment before they'd entered the Ministry that he'd grabbed Sirius's underwear by mistake, but as he stepped into the room they were lying on the floor where they'd been left, discarded as something merely _in the way_.

It was just like Sirius, to die without underwear on.

It was Remus's first instinct to make the bed; he couldn't stand seeing the covers crumpled and pillows on the floor. Remus's pillows. Sirius always managed to make the most mess on Remus's side of the bed. He was quite sure he'd done it on purpose.

Before he could, though, something moved in Remus's peripheral vision, and when he turned, the breath catching in his throat, wondering - hoping - _wondering_ if Bellatrix or someone else had come to wait for the Order here, he was confronted with his own face. And James's. Peter's. Sirius's.

The photograph. It always caught him out, the movement strange against Sirius's ridiculous muggle posters. They were so young. He remembered when it had been taken. He remembered setting the camera up. He'd had a phase where he'd rather fancied himself a photographer; James had called him all sorts for it but Sirius had been rather pleased. After he discovered he would be the subject of most of Remus's photographs, in any case.

He laughed quietly, looking from his own face to Sirius's. He'd never understood what Sirius had seen in him. Sirius had always been beautiful. Remus didn't know how someone could escape from over a decade in prison and spend a year on the run and still be beautiful, but there it was. _Fuck_ he missed him. It had only been two hours, if that, and they'd spent longer apart than that before. He'd gone twelve years.

He sunk down onto the bed, his eyes still fixed on the photograph of Sirius, before everything _fucked up_, before war aged them and tore them apart, before distrust crept into their eyes and their beds and he didn't know how he'd managed to forget in two fucking years how he'd done it before. How he'd lived without him. He didn't know how he'd last another twelve, twenty, fifty years. The wide expanse of time stretched out in front of him and it all seemed so pointless, so empty, simply days Sirius would never see, newspaper articles Sirius would never complain loudly about just to fucking complain about _something _because he was a _wanker_ and Remus loved him. He'd only just got him back. It wasn't fair.

The grief tore so suddenly and so quickly through him he felt like he might be sick. Time itself seemed incomprehensible now Sirius wasn't around to make it move too quickly. _Had_ it been two hours? It felt like years. Remus felt _old_. And so, so alone.

McGonagall wouldn't come like she came last time. He wasn't twenty one now, he wasn't a child anymore and he didn't need anyone to save him, to explain to him what had actually happened after being fucking interrogated because _how could you have missed the fact you were living with a Death Eater_? This time he'd do it alone, because he'd have to. Because there was no one else. Because he was the last one left from that photograph who still fucking deserved to be in that photograph.

He cried despite himself, and no one came. No one would, not now. He'd lost the last person who would have bothered but crying on the bed where they'd made love together and slept together and _fucked_ and pretended not to notice each other's nightmares and never mentioned them as they held each other silently wouldn't magically make him come bursting through the door, asking why the fuck they had all carried on fighting without him and couldn't they have just waited _five minutes_, asking smugly why he was crying because he was a little _shit_ and Remus _hated _him. How could he do that? How could he leave him now? The second war hadn't even started yet and he'd fucked off already and left Remus to it. Well what if Remus didn't want to fight? What if he'd had enough? What if wandering around talking _shit_ to werewolves about how they'd be _valued_ and treated like _humans_ on this side was wearing thin because it was all bollocks anyway, they'd be treated like animals on either side. His was just more subtle about it. And this time he'd have no one to come home to.

He hated the fucking war. He hated the fucking world and himself and Voldemort and Dumbledore and everyone.

He grabbed a backpack - even that wasn't free of memories because he fucking remembered being with Sirius when he bought it. He wondered why Sirius didn't have anything new, anything to show he'd actually _lived_ past twenty one, until he remembered he hadn't. Not really. Hard to buy a new backpack in Azkaban. Which meant no matter where he went in this room, which drawers he pulled open to roughly pack fucking _bollocks_ that meant _nothing_ because nothing meant anything anymore, he could remember something about it. Like a fucking antiquities dealer, specialising in Sirius Black.

He didn't need any of it. None of it was him. But he needed to get out of here and he needed clothes and it wasn't his fault if some of Sirius's made their way in there alongside Remus's.

He didn't pack much though. He was suffocating in here, memories clogging his throat like the thick dust coating the chandelier on the ceiling they both hated but never got around to taking down.

He knew he'd regret it later, much later when it was far too late to come back, but he didn't look back before he closed the door behind him.


End file.
